RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dr. Scherz is a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School.

“Proponents of the Affordable Care Act have long used the VA to showcase the benefits of federally planned and run health care. Doctors know otherwise—and it is no surprise that a majority of them have opposed a mammoth federal regulatory apparatus to control health care in this country. The systemic problems with the VA bureaucracy are a harbinger of things to come.”

With the recent revelations about the disgraceful treatment of patients by the Veterans Affairs hospitals, the public is discovering what the majority of doctors in this country have long known: The VA health-care system is a disaster. Throwing more money at the system, or demanding the scalps of top bureaucrats—Washington’s reflexive response to any problem of this sort—won’t repair the mess. What’s needed is a fundamental rethinking of how to provide medical care for America’s veterans.

The federal government runs two giant health-care programs—Medicare and the VA system. Medicare is provided by private physicians and other providers. Its finances are a mess, but the care that seniors receive is by and large outstanding. The VA health-care system is run by a centrally controlled federal bureaucracy. Ultimately, that is the source of the poor care veterans receive.

U.S. doctors are well aware of the problems with VA hospitals because many of us trained at them. There are 153 VA hospitals. Most of them are affiliated with the country’s 155 medical schools, and they play an integral role in the education of young physicians. These physicians have borne witness to the abuses and mismanagement, and when they attempt to fight against the entrenched bureaucracy on behalf of their patients, they meet fierce resistance.

The Supreme Court has done its best to kill a harmful theory that merges the worst instincts of the tort bar and green lobby, but the idea won’t stay dead. The Justices now need to polish off this legal zombie for good.

For years environmentalists have sued utilities on the claim that their emissions are a “public nuisance” under common law and therefore the courts should make U.S. climate change policy. In 2011 an unusual 8-0 majority of Justices held in American Electric Power v. Connecticut that this question belongs to the political branches and the Court “remains mindful that it does not have creative power akin to that vested in Congress.”

That case turned on federal common law, but class-action plaintiffs revived the nuisance doctrine under state common law—and for some reason the Third Circuit Court of Appeals accepted this nondistinction. In GenOn Power v. Bell, a group of homeowners argued the traditional air pollutants of a local Pennsylvania power plant damaged their property values, but if allowed to stand the decision could also apply to carbon dioxide.

The plant was permitted and in full compliance with all federal and state standards under the Clear Air Act, which Congress passed in the 1970s precisely to pre-empt such common-law pollution nuisance suits. The point was to establish one uniform, predictable regulatory regime, and—whatever its faults in practice—this system is preferable to ad hoc, case-by-case injunctions that substitute the judiciary’s judgment for that of Congress and federal agencies.

Green torts copying the Bell argument have already proliferated within the Third Circuit, and the tort bar is bidding to import the same logic into the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits as well. Failing to reverse the decision could expose U.S. industry to billion of dollars of liability and lead to a state-by-state chopped salad of pollution controls as judges make what are quintessentially political decisions. The Bell defendants are asking the Supreme Court to take the case, and the Justices should take the opportunity to close the state common-law loophole before more damage is done.

If colleges won’t stick up for free speech, why would they oppose the implicit censorship of ‘trigger warnings’?

For those who have not yet caught up with it, in the academic world the phrase “trigger warning” means alerting students to books that might “trigger” deleterious emotional effects. Should a Jewish student be asked to read “Oliver Twist” with its anti-Semitic caricature of Fagin, let alone “The Merchant of Venice,” whose central figure is the Jewish usurer Shylock? Should African-American students be required to read “Huckleberry Finn,” with its generous use of the “n-word,” or “Heart of Darkness,” which equates the Congo with the end of rational civilization? Should students who are ardent pacifists be made to read about warfare in Tolstoy and Stendhal, or for that matter the Iliad? As for gay and lesbian students, or students who have suffered sexual abuse, or those who have a physical handicap . . . one could go on.

Pointing out the potentially damaging effects of books began, like so much these days, on the Internet, where intellectual Samaritans began listing such emotionally troublesome books on their blogs. Before long it was picked up by the academy. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, the student government suggested that all course syllabi contain trigger warnings. At Oberlin College the Office of Equity Concerns advised professors to steer clear of works that might be interpreted as sexist or racist or as vaunting violence.

Movies have of course long been rated and required to note such items as Adult Language, Violence, Nudity—ratings that are themselves a form of trigger warning. Why not books, even great classic books? The short answer is that doing so insults the intelligence of those supposedly serious enough to attend college by suggesting they must not be asked to read anything that fails to comport with their own beliefs or takes full account of their troubled past experiences.

Trigger warnings logically follow from the recent history of American academic life. This is a history in which demographic diversity has triumphed over intellectual standards and the display of virtue over the search for truth. So much of this history begins in good intentions and ends in the tyranny of conformity.

Supporters of a deal with Iran assume three things, all questionable.

The clandestine production of nuclear weapons by rogue states promises to create what Yale Professor Paul Bracken terms an “exceedingly volatile poly-nuclear Middle East.”[1]

Against the backdrop of negotiations between the United States, Russia, China, France, Great Britain and Germany, (known as the P5+1), on the one hand and Iran on the other, his warning is particularly important.

In 1961, a leading defense analyst, Fred Ikle, wrote, “In entering into an arms-control agreement, we must know not only that we are technically capable of detecting a violation but also that we or the rest of the world will be… in a position to react effectively if a violation is discovered.”

At least five states have sought to build nuclear bombs clandestinely: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea. All are or were signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], which prohibits all except the permanent five members of the UN Security Council from acquiring nuclear weapons.

During the past few decades they were given clean bills of health by the International Atomic Energy Administration, [IAEA], the UN organization monitoring nuclear energy programs to prevent them from being secretly transformed into parallel nuclear weapons programs.

The reason Iraq and Syria did not succeed in becoming nuclear weapons states was due to Israeli air strikes on their nuclear reactors in 1981 and 2007.

Iraq failed again in its quest for nuclear weapons because — in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Desert Storm campaign, which ousted Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from the occupation of Kuwait — the U.S. discovered and destroyed Baghdad’s nuclear program.

“Political and religious terrorism began with the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood…” — Farag Foda, Egyptian intellectual murdered by Islamists in 1992, in Terrorism [al-Irhab]

Islamist movements have different tactics… but their goal is always the same: Get in and impose sharia law to establish an Islamic state.

The problem is not so much the Muslim Brotherhood as the schizophrenia of governments that one day condemn them and the next day work with them.

“What I think is important about the Muslim Brotherhood,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said on April 1, while announcing a long-overdue investigation of the activities of Muslim Brotherhood in the UK and its involvement in February’s terror attack at the Egyptian resort of Taba, “is that we understand what this organisation is, what it stands for, what its beliefs are in terms of the path of extremism and violent extremism, what its connections are with other groups, what its presence is here in the United Kingdom. Our policies should be informed by a complete picture of that knowledge. It is an important piece of work because we will only get our policy right if we fully understand the true nature of the organisation that we are dealing with.”

“The objective, then, is to strike terror into the hearts of God’s enemies, who are also the enemies of the advocates of Islam…” — Sayyid Qutb, chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Egyptian Brotherhood’s reaction, published on its English website, was immediate:

The Muslim Brotherhood has always had a perfectly reputable and verifiable history record and a correct understanding of religion ever since it was founded, more than 86 years ago. The group is ready and willing to cooperate with all efforts to understand its beliefs, policies and positions. It also denounces all media campaigns that try to demonize the group and link it to violent incidents which it condemned in no ambiguous terms at the time, the most recent of which was the attack on a tourist bus in Taba (in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula) in February 2014.[…]

The Brotherhood’s press release also pointed out the long-standing relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the UK:

First: The Brotherhood was surprised at the latest remarks, since all successive British governments had always been the most expertly informed about the group’s positions and peaceful approach. The group has not and will not change its principles or approach no matter how big or small it becomes, notwithstanding all the injustice it suffers, the cold-blooded murders and arbitrary arrests of its members.

Second: The group’s principles and ideology, which it has been teaching its members for more than eighty years in all parts of the world, from East to West, have been announced, published and thoroughly researched and studied by many Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, researchers and research centers all over the world – all of which affirmed, time and time again, that the group’s approach is perfectly peaceful and that all its methods are non-violent.

The Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls were visited by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, aka CAIR, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). These trained public relations groups reach out to the under informed, accommodating citizens, in political and religious institutions, public libraries, schools and universities, and government security forces, to whitewash their history, hide their intent, inhibit discussion, prohibit news coverage of acts of violence, and control language that exposes the truths of Islam.

CAIR and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) were unindicted co-conspirators of the Holy Land Foundation, a front organization for Hamas, a designated, chartered terrorist group. They are no different than the Muslims who are killing Christians and Jews throughout the world; the same as Boko Haram that kidnapped, converted and killed the female students in Nigeria; the same as those who burned to death male students just weeks before; and the same as those who recently destroyed entire villages in Nigeria, burned down 200 homes and butchered 16 while intoning Allahu Akbar. They differ only in their attire.

Among the many strategies of Islamic conquest is to use a grassroots network of social and charitable organizations to expand their membership base. Their God demands conversion or death to infidels and Islam is responsible for the slaughter of 270 million people over 14 centuries – with more than 23,000 deadly jihad attacks since 9/11/01. Eighty percent of their Koran incites and advocates death.

Their claim of victimization is bogus; they are the aggressors in today’s world. They do not live the Gospel of tolerance and peace, or the Biblical Commandments or Golden Rule. Rather, they advocate the cruelest set of laws, Sharia, on the planet. Behind a façade of Mohammad’s earlier writings and their five pillars of faith, the later writings in their Koran, Hadith, and Sura contain a doctrine of hate and commands to kill Jews and Christians primarily, but also Hindus, Buddhists, all infidels and apostates. Sexual slavery continues in Islam. This is a political ideology couched as religion, to globalize Islam. They have made continents unsafe; Jews are fleeing for their lives and Christians who have nowhere to run are beginning to experience the crimes of Islam – riots, no-go zones, rapes, terrorism, honor killings, and a loss of their native identity.

I ask the Franciscan sisters to please research this themselves and perhaps obtain the documentary, “Honor Diaries,” for how women are severely mistreated in Islam. I also urge them and all their coreligionists to go to www.memritv.org and download a cross-section of weekly sermons translated into English, for an analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural and religious trends in the Middle East. Books by Nonie Darwish or Brigitte Gabriel or Ayaan Hirsi Alli would also provide a truthful exposé of Islam.

The Sisters were told that Muslims and Christians need to come together to stop the violence, but it is the Muslims, not the Christians, who are committing the crimes against five religions in dozens of countries. CAIR’s purpose is to soften their history and temper any possible resistance against their imposition of Sharia.
The Sisters were told that individuals commit violence, not religions, but it is the Islamic individuals who are commanded by their religion/culture/ideology who commit the violence – not only against other religions but among themselves, particularly against their women. It is the Muslims who are taught to hate in their schools, mosques, and television programs and their Koran that promises heavenly reward for carrying out jihad.
The Sisters were told they had to return to their moral compass, but does CAIR have a moral compass when Muslim deeds include rape, beheading, dismemberment, castration, gouging-out eyes, flogging, stoning, hanging, blinding women with acid; enforcing genital mutilation on young girls, enforcing their marriage to considerably older men; and keeping many women enshrouded, unable to drive, socialize, or attend school? Their god advocates murder and destruction in at least 109 Koranic verses.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman were right when they blamed the noxious anti-Israel incitement rampant in Europe for Saturday’s murderous shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and the assault and battery of two Jewish brothers outside their synagogue in a Paris suburb later that day.

Anti-Israel incitement is ubiquitous in Europe and is appearing in ever-widening circles of the Western world as a whole.

Until this week, the Catholic Church stayed out of the campaign to dehumanize Jews and malign the Jewish state.

Pope Benedict XVI was perceived as a friend of Israel, despite his childhood membership in the Hitler Youth. His opposition to Islam’s rejection of reason, eloquently expressed at his speech at the University of Regensburg in 2006, positioned him as a religious champion of reason, individual responsibility and law – Judaism’s primary contributions to humanity.

His predecessor Pope John Paul II was less willing to confront Islamic violence. But his opposition to Communism made him respect Israel as freedom’s outpost in the Middle East. John Paul’s visit to Israel in 2000 was in some ways an historic gesture of friendship to the Jewish people of Israel.

Both Benedict and John Paul II were outspoken champions of the Second Vatican Council and maintained doctrinal allegiance to the Church’s rejection of anti-Judaism, including the charge of deicide, and its denunciation of replacement theology.

Alas, the Golden Age of Catholic-Jewish relations seems to have come to an end during Francis’s visit to the Promised Land this week.

In one of his blander pronouncements during the papal visit, Netanyahu mentioned on Monday that Jesus spoke Hebrew. There was nothing incorrect about Netanyahu’s statement. Jesus was after all, an Israeli Jew.

But Francis couldn’t take the truth. So he indelicately interrupted his host, interjecting, “Aramaic.”

After 1700 years of ongoing harassment, forced conversions, massacres and pogroms, one was looking forward to a different relationship in the 21st century between the Jewish world and Catholicism.

The latest Papal visit has destroyed a great deal of the good work of Vatican II and those who laboured in the fields of building bridges. Each Papal visit to the Holy Land is filled with symbolic gestures and each move is calculated and orchestrated, and this visit was meant to embarrass and berate the Jewish State.

The visit by Pope Francis, with his two wingmen, Rabbi Abraham Skovka and Imam Omar Abboud, was all part of the effort to help set the stage for a most severe attack by the Vatican on the Jewish homeland.

Pope Francis chose first to visit with Abu Mazen who is in the midst of forming a National Unity Government between Fatah and Hamas (a recognized international terrorist organization). Also, His Holiness would fly directly into what he calls the Palestinian State and not the Palestinian Authority.

Pope Francis’ dramatic gesture at the security barrier was a paparazzi delight. It created an instant iconic photo that will be used by Islamists around the world. The Pope, dressed in his splendid white robe, accorded this security barrier the same status as the holy Western Wall of the Temple.

His hand and head were gently placed next to the anti-Semitic graffiti comparing the security wall, which has protected Israeli civilians from Islamist terrorists, as a wall that symbolized the Warsaw Ghetto wall. The Pope could not have chosen to insult the Jewish people with any greater gesture. What an insult to the victims of Nazism. What a mockery of history.

Historically, there were two ways to get rich: hard work and inheritance, apart from hitting the jackpot or robbing a bank of course. Now, in a world of ethically challenged public servants, there is another way – public service.

Inheritance, for the few, is still a powerful means. Four of the ten richest members of Congress have inherited wealth. In 2012, Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, called cybercrime the greatest transfer of wealth in history. That may be true, but in 2000 the Planned Giving Design Center (PGDC) estimated that between 1998 and 2052 $41 trillion will pass from one generation to the next – the greatest foreseeable transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Nevertheless, those funds will only go to a lucky few.

Most wealth in the U.S. has been self-made. Aspiration, inspiration and perspiration, with a dose of luck, have allowed millions of Americans to become wealthy, and a small number to become very rich. Rags to riches stories, like Horatio Alger and the Rollo Books, were once commonly read by young people, providing inspiration to succeed. For millions of immigrants, America represented the fulfillment of a dream. Unlike “the old country,” it made little difference where one was born, or what was one’s name; a desire to better one’s self through hard work was what mattered. Independence and self-reliance were valued qualities.

While money and politics have long been soul-mates, the relationship has only strengthened in recent years. Ironically, while we have become a nation that encourages dependency by providing more and more services, we have also become intrigued with wealth and with the things money can buy. We are fascinated by homes that cost over $100 million; the Wall Street Journal has a section on Thursday’s called, “Mansions.” The Financial Times has a weekly glossy magazine entitled, “How to Spend It.” A Norman Rockwell painting that graced a $0.15 copy of a 1951 edition of the “Saturday Evening Post” sold for $46 million late last year. Idiosyncrasies of the rich are regularly featured in glossy magazines, on TV and on the internet, allowing vicarious feelings of jealousy to gestate. We admire Pope Francis, but would prefer to live like New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. It is unsurprising that in such a milieu, a $174,000 a year Congressman or a $400,000 a year President would feel he or she had been left behind.

A focus on materialism permeates a bloated government bureaucracy. In the past, there were workers who would willingly give up some income for security. Government jobs fit that request. Those jobs were less responsive to economic challenges and less subject to the whims of private sector owners or managers. In that prior time, reduced risk of job loss equated to less pay.

Some counties have dictators, tyrants and kings. America has victims in high office. Victims with vast powers and great wealth who despite all that are oppressed by the people they rule.

They are the oppressed oppressors.

Never has a ruling class been as oppressed as ours by an ignorant rabble that rudely abuses the army of benevolent public servants who see to their welfare in exchange for nothing except a feeling of moral satisfaction and a six-figure salary. Not to mention unlimited power.

“They talk about me like a dog,” Obama complained. “Is it a lack of respect for me?” he whined to the Secretary of Defense.

When Obama isn’t complaining, the media outlets of the ruling class do it for him. Every hour one of the greasy suckers on the tentacle of a massive media corporation with lavish skyscraper headquarters in four countries calls out the subliminal bigotry of the people who dare to criticize the man who controls every aspect of their lives.

The media has worked its iPads off alerting us to the perpetual victimization of the Obamas. From NBC to NPR, from CNN to CBS, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, the billion dollar corporations have spoken in one voice and they have said that criticizing the most powerful man in the world is racist. And they have told us that our ingratitude depresses him.

“The world seems to disappoint him,” David Remnick said. Remnick deftly balances the responsibilities of promoting Obama as editor of the New Yorker (Advance Publications – $6.56 billion) and promoting Obama as author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” (Bertelsmann – $22 billion).